Some say
that this is the best of times to be a missionary and others say that mission
is finished, and both are right.
Diminishing
vocations and less need for traditional apostolates indicate that mission, as
we knew it, is finished. But there is a new buzz in mission circles about the
energizing possibilities being opened for the whole Church by a wider
understanding of the missionary task.
One of his
insights is that, “North Atlantic theology is liveliest
today where it is fertilized by the writing and developments of the global
South…. We are a world Church in the midst of a world Christian movement.”
This is
also a key theme of Stephen Bevan SVD of CTU ,
Chicago. In Constants in Context, which
he co-authored with his colleague Roger Schroeder, they see mission as, “Taking
the church beyond itself into history, into cultures, into people’s lives,
beckoning it constantly to ‘cross frontiers’.”
Catholic
and Protestants writers alike are reminding us that the Western
Church Europe converted
and the Church associated with Europe .
Earlier the Eastern Churches (like the
Syrian) were larger and showed greater diversity by presenting themselves in
the languages and forms of the cultures they encountered. It was only after
they were virtually wiped out by Islam that variety diminished and the predominance
of the Roman Church, especially its liturgies and theologies, became a reality.
If you wish to find out more on how this happened, read Philip Jenkin’s The Lost History of Christianity.
Another influential writer who
reminds us of what it means to be a universal Church is Lamin Sannah. He was
reared in the Islamic tradition in Gambia
His message is that Christianity does
not belong to any one culture and will never
spread as long as it is tied to Westernization. Christian scripture is not
confined to any one language and this has led to its being translated into many
tongues. In the process scripture was enriched by the religious insights of those
countries. It was only later that an imperial mindset sought to confine people
to a single way of thinking, celebrating and behaving as Catholics. He draws
lessons from the Islamic interaction with Christianity in Africa ,
the contribution of Charismatic Christians, the African rejection of colonial
versions of Christianity and recent events in a very nationalistic China
In Latin America ,
liberation theologians sought to take up the dialogue with context by bringing
the message into the lives of the people and in doing so they encountered the striking
vitality of folk religion.
As Andrew
Walls in his The Missionary Movement in
Christian History says, “What is changing is not the task, but the means
and mode.” Drawing from a wide scope of examples, Protestant and Catholic, he
shows that cross-cultural transmission is integral to Christian faith, it not
only spreads the good news to others but the inter-action enriches the
universal church by revealing the meaning and significance of Christ in ways
that were never guessed before.
Most older missionaries were not
trained for the challenges of mutual enrichment-through-mission but they have
picked up much relevant experience along the way. Younger missionaries had more
opportunities to avail of the relevant new scholarship but often they were not
encouraged to see context as central to their task so they came to regard it as
optional. Providentially there is now no shortage of resources to help us
clarify our task and re-equip ourselves for it.
A good starting point is to re-read
the works of Mircea Eliade who reminds us that our ancestors, long before the
Great Religions, showed their respect for sacred time and space in rituals,
myths and symbols that remain a key to our religious thinking today. They are the
background against which we can compare our own Christian practices with those
of other religions.
Folk religions provide the clearest
examples of this universal human attitude to the sacred and for anyone involved
in mission the most valuable dialogue can be with the local folk religion. Each
country has studies of its own traditions but even a book like John
Lagerwey’s China: A Religious State, illustrates for anyone interested in the
subject the tension that is inevitable between state or official religions
(such as Confucianism in China) and the local deities of the rural majority
(such as in Daoism and Shamanism in China). The history of Daoism also shows
how religions tend to become mirror images of the national bureaucracy with
minor gods reporting to senior gods and so on up the supreme emperor god. The
manner in which Christianity took on the trappings of the Roman
Empire , and the contrast between its ‘official’ and popular
expressions, are other examples.
Finally, for those wishing to
understand the world in which we live, the works on secularization by Charles
Taylor provide valuable insights. Taylor
The reason I have quoted from so
many books is not just to share what I myself have being reading but to
indicate another reason why it is so exciting to be involved in mission today.
We now have available books, tapes, lectures and seminars on the questions
about which we always needed to know more. With the click of a keyboard, even Google
will provide useful information.
However, I have found little about
this new exciting prospect for mission in recent Columban meetings, documents
or writings. If we have a future as a missionary society it is by involvement
in this new openness to other cultures and traditions and the nourishment they
can provide for our own faith understanding. Of course, our involvement in cross-cultural
mission is not just for our own sake but to bring the Good News to others. Now
we are being made aware of a new way of doing this and at the same time
restoring the universality and passion of the world church.
Remember, there
was once a moment in human history when transport changed from horses to
engines. However, there were those who believed that this happened only because
there were not enough horses. We are at such a moment.
Hugh
MacMahon. 5/3/11
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